The Egg
by telegramsam
Summary: Javert & the Afterlife... of sorts


A/N: Every few years I sit down and bash out one of these weirdo one-off fanfictions that barely make sense over the course of a few hours at most. There's usually mistakes since I never edit much after spilling the thing out other giving it a once-over for grammar/spelling.

I guess I was overdue. :D

Javert (and Valjean, a bit) is the victim this time, since I felt bad about Javert not being anywhere at the end. My deepest apologies.

_Javert and the afterlife, of sorts._

The Egg

* * *

Water, rushing up toward him, like a concrete wall – the sound of the roaring cataract.

Pain, bone-cold… briefly.

Darkness, muteness, of the sort which precludes even the possibility of light, of sound. It wrapped around his brain like an oily substance, extinguishing thought and feeling.

Nothing.

_Am I dead? Can the dead think, 'Am I dead?'_

Something - tugging at his consciousness. Hands… maybe. More like a fishhook, only… gentler. Pulling upward, upward, until breaking through a surface.

Darkness, muteness, nothingness – yet not. Emptiness now, but not a negation.

The oil receded as something more like a clean breeze rushed in to replace it.

Time passed. Or didn't. It was difficult to tell.

_I am dead. I have damned myself and I am dead. Is this Hell?  
_

Sound reached him as if from a great distance, or muffled - laughter, singing and shouting - a great crowd, slowly growing in volume, then seeming to disperse.

Quiet again, then footsteps. Sometimes in twos, fours, or uncountable groups. Formless conversations bubbling up and popping as they passed. Sometimes they stopped before him and he felt briefly as though he were being watched, before the voices and steps moved on.

Then followed by the sound of a door or gate opening and shutting.

He could see nothing, feel very little, shut up inside himself like an unborn bird in an eggshell, straddling a line somewhere between consciousness and dreams.

_Is this Hell? Is this purgatory? Must be. Fell – no, _jumped_. I fell, and then I jumped. Or was it the other way around? Does it matter? Result is the same – certain damnation.  
_

_Do wish they'd hurry up and get on with it, though. Whatever 'it' is to be. Can't be… this.  
_

A very strange sort of Hell, then.

Days passed. Or was it months? Years? Seconds. A passing of some sort, that couldn't be measured - time, footsteps, and invisible eyes that he somehow just _knew_ were boring into him, accusing him of his crime against the Law and against God.

_All are born in sin, choose a path. Faltered. Fell – as must, as it must have been written since... Disorder. Born inside a jail, tainted from beginning. Chaos. Can never change, never change, a man like you, never change. Fate. Immutable._

_ Why?_

The footsteps and voices grew fewer and further between, dwindling to a steady trickle. The breeze returned, rocking the egg gently like a seabird resting on the open ocean, marred only by an oily blackness rolling nauseously inside around a trembling yolk.

Blindness, still, but now points of light which could be not seen, but felt. _Like stars_. They pulled at him in a manner that almost implied intent, insistence, a coaxing, but he turned away, ashamed, yet could not escape the warm weight of them against his thoughts.

Still, voices and footsteps, passing like clouds.

"What is that?"

"Weird, I dunno."

"Hm… a rock? Maybe an egg? Beats me. Come on my friends, we are called - we must go."

_Taught me how to lie, to charm with the tongue, with the tilt of a smile. Taught me how to stalk, how to steal, not be seen. Yes, mother. Yes, of course.  
_

_To watch carefully, hide too.  
_

_Stay away from them, large, hard hands that will bruise young flesh. Demons in broad daylight. _They'll eat you up, son. Well, if I don't first._  
_

_Dark._ They can't see me in here. _Warm._

_Safe._

"What is that? Curious sort of thing to be _here_, don't you think?"

"Something that somebody lost, perhaps."

"Strange… well let us go on, then, let us not keep the rest waiting."

_An underfed pup pulling against a chain much larger than itself. A collar already too small and restricting, cutting into young, growing flesh. Pain rivaled only by a formless yearning for a freedom it cannot, at this point, even conceive of. But instinctively it seeks something beyond, its head now pulled up and back by its struggle against its bondage. A dome of starlight fills up its bewildered vision._

_In time it learns, in a Pavlovian fashion, that the chain's pull guides its eyes, and the stars and the chain and the pain all meld together into one and the same will, eternally, unchangeably linked. It looks upon its bounds and deems it Holy.  
_

_It will protect this at all cost, at all pain, to its own death._

"What is that?"

"I don't know, child. And yet something about it feels… familiar."

"Does it? Yes, it does a bit, I suppose. But we must go on. They're waiting"

"We must… no, it can't be. Can it? My dear, go on ahead. I will find you. I'm… afraid there is something I must do."

There was something pulling at him again. No fishhook, nor starlight, but solid, human hands – large, warm, full of strength. Had he felt them before? Gripping at the ether of his substance. Not violent, but determined. Gentle, but very firm.

_Come for me at last, at last. Final destruction... No please leave me. Please no. I don't want to come out. To be destroyed. No.  
_

Strong hands reach through the boundary of the egg, seeking inside for purchase, for something to grasp. They blindly grope, pushing through a dark and burning albumen to find something warm and trembling in the center. It slips in and out of the grasp like a hagfish, but the hands grasp ever tighter, until it has nowhere else to go.

They pull.

Something tears deep within a soul, a rusting chain shatters and a blind dog howls in terror, crying out for a master it has never seen.

Light floods in and Javert shrieks like dying beast, and at last hears the voice of his own pain.

Water, rushing up toward him, like a concrete wall – the sound of the roaring cataract.

Suddenly, Javert lay on a bed of impossibly green grass, light from an indistinct, sunless sky filtering from above through a canopy of leaves. He drew breath deeply as if he had just been near drowning, though he was warm and dry. He could not make his eyes focus properly and his body felt weightless and insubstantial, numb fingers flexing weakly against the ground.

_Am I dead?_

A shadow flooded into his view, slowly resolving into a face that felt dreadfully familiar.

_Valjean. Of course. Am I never to be rid of you?  
_

'Am I dead?'

'Yes, as am I.'

_This must be Hell. Why is this horrible saint here, then? Does God send even his servants to torment the damned?  
_

A hand grasps his and slowly pulls him to his feet. Others pass by on the path. Mostly alone, sometimes in groups. There is a gate at the end of the path which opens as they pass through and shuts behind them. He cannot see what lays past it.

'Come with me.'

Javert opens his mouth but cannot form speech to respond. A hand settles between his shoulder blades and beckons him forward and for the moment he finds he cannot resist. They reach the gates and he see only light beyond. A mite of understanding awakens in his brain.

_But I am damned!  
_

'Come on then. Others are waiting.'

Finally his tongue loosens itself.

'_No_. No, it's a _mistake_, I _failed_, I _can't_, I'm not _allowed_—'

The sound of the roaring cataract. Tears which shame him further. He lands on his knees in the grass and cannot go forward.

Valjean looks down at him, his expression lost in shadow as the light pours out from the gate behind him.

'Can you forgive me, Javert?'

The man on the ground shudders in answer, but his silence is somehow less stubborn than before.

'Will you allow yourself to be forgiven, Javert?'

He cannot answer. He thinks perhaps he will, in time. But he cannot yet.

A man sits down in impossibly green grass on a footpath, leaning against the post of a gate, waiting as long as his companion needs. Others pass through, sometimes glancing but never stopping for long. But really, there was no rush. They had time.

Eventually, they will go forward together.


End file.
